Can anyone explain exactly what the fuss..

Can't stand George Galloway, because he strikesme as a phoney, but I watched his Russia Today show today and Ken Livingstone was on. Galloway seemed to be falling for the Boris show, but I got the impression that Ken does not like Boris much.

Ken said that Boris is not really right wing and that Conservative voters will be disappointed if he ever becomes leader because he doesn't believe in stuff like Thatcher did, apart from promoting himself.

He said that Boris had done very little as Mayor apart from continue Ken's stuff but not invest in building homes for rent. Ken also said that people who don't know Boris like him, but that often those who have worked for him or with him have a different view of him. He mentioned Max Hastings, who was Boris's boss at one paper or journal, as an example.

He has done nothing to try and tackle the worsening pollution.

E.g. diesel cars and buses - he could have brought in measures earlier but it is being pushed back much later.

He's got money to spend, don't try and fool me with the whole labour left a piss poor budget rubbish. And it doesn't cost much to impose stricter controls on air quality.

Influential media with a political bias, go figure.

What if they don't PROMOTE a person, but hush up a government policy that will affect most people in the country re pressure on jobs, homes, and public services e.g. immigration - as THAT is what non Blair/Labour critics had to put up with for several years - welcome to our world

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2354713/BBC-chief-admits-We-deep-liberal-bias-migrants--changed.html

www.thecommentator.com/article/1953/exclusive_bbc_left_wing_political_bias_illustrated_through_uk_political_funding_revelations

Re Boris in answer to you OP I began by saying that (after Ken Livingstone had enjoyed 8-years of government spending plenty) that it could have been 'a lot worse', and fully answered/countered most of your gripes against him - bar the personal ones, which does not have to affect his ability in a cabinet.

As to being 'political', was your last para not so, as there is not an opening for PM and anyhoo, one person does not form a government.
"Is he really Prime Minister material? I hope the answer doesn't come when it's too late to realise that entertainment doesn't make for good government."

As I have said here and another post or two, I am not overly a fan re Boris being an MP, and if I really wanted to be political I'd would NOT have said that "it could have been worse", I 'd have said that based on the performance of the Labour government with £££hundreds of billions, a 100 to 140 odd parliamentary seat majority to mould the UK exactly how they wanted - Boris probably has more ability in his little finger, than all the Miliband half-wits put together - and another Labour term of mayor of London, would have been a disaster for the city.

OP was on Sunday morning Stig Abell - of Sun and Spectator?
I guess he is of Conservative leaning and LBC IMHO is very pro Tories

HappydaysArehere …… re the airport, there is not doubt we need to increase capacity asap, so there will be an expense anyway – and what price can we put on converting a redundant Heathrow into homes the size of a small Garden City.

Re Council Tax up over 110% in 13-years, at least ‘the few’ with non jobs, can thank the many including you, for ‘growf’ Labour style.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358144/Labours-3m-town-hall-jobs-bonanza-employed-deliver-frontline-services.html

And when this country could afford infrastructure like an airport, connecting the south with better links to and around the north, new nuclear power stations to stop UK power cuts in the next harsh winter, AND hundreds of thousands of new homes, we chose fat government instead.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

With a 2010 unbalanced economy, still a £100 bil a year budget deficit overspend (from £157 bil back then) and around £1.4 trillion National Debt, I can’t foresee a time that we will be nearly debt free and building new infrastructure will genuinely be called ‘affordable’.

And as I say not only can many projects annually increase GDP/output, if important infrastructure is not replaced when at/over capacity, it REDUCED our annual GDP/output – as just think, there are billions of people in Asia and South America earning more each year as their economies grow, so trade and tourism could increase massively in the decades ahead.

Excuse the bias of the link below, but it does confirm what I thought, at 98% capacity, Heathrow is bursting and we currently need the new capacity in the South – what is the point sending people/goods to our Midlands/North, if it has to come back south? Not to mention carbon footprints and all that hot air.
www.heathrowairport.com/about-us/company-news-and-information/airports-commission

Like it or not, Boris has the hair of a prairie hat (slang), but the brains to be a bit of a visionary and waiting to be over run by airtraffic demand, lose trade/tourists, and THEN spending over a decade rushing to fund/design and fix it (like our lack of nuclear power stations), is incompetent governance. IMO.

HappydaysArehere .... Re Crossrail, you are not wrong, it appears final plans were put together under Ken's watch, but it appears proposals have been put together since before John Wayne was a cowboy, several on a Tory watch.

Re Heathrow or wherever extensions, the question is, what is Heathrow's current capacity 95%, 98%, whatever, my point is building another runway destroying villages creates capacity for how long?

Whats wrong with getting ahead of the capacity bumping game for decades to come, creating land on an unused area and upset some wildlife instead?

This country creaks from Victorian infrastructure, if the Private Sector picks up most/all of the bill, improving travel links have to be some time, why not now, create real jobs and improve economic growth through such projects and new road links etc.

I reiterate we spent at least £170 bil of taxpayers money of fat Labour government/Quangos, with nothing to show for it but senior apparatchiks fat 6-figure salaries, their fat unfunded liability Public Sector final salaries and children having a private education.

It's a question of priorities and vision, me thinks.

HappydaysArehere .... Re the Dome not as expensive as an airport, I realize you are more used to Labour governments saying they will control, part or nationalize 'stuff' whether the country is on the brink of needing an IMF bailout (when Labour last called them in in 1976) from bailouts on of uncompetitive industry - but an airport unlike the Dome is for millions of people a year for a generation, not for a big honking party on one specific night. And it depends how much of the total cost is paid for by the Private Sector.

But I get it, you would rather excuse and have back the totally incompetent government that over 13-years completely screwed up this nation by a 100-seat plus majority and policy DESIGN, than Conservatives who sorted Labour's shit out from 1979, handed Labour the fastest growing economy in 1997, for them in 2010 to be handed over even greater Labour shit, to pass over to Labour the strongest economy in the G7 by 2015 - its a myopic 'class thang', we'd rather be bust like Greece, than be governed by politicians with the real brains. Marvellous.

Iggy ..... you insinuate that I'm a wally, but at the moment to me, you are sounding churlish at best; your exact words were "Boris has ushered in terrible pollution endangering the health of my children."

Please specify what he has done to INCREASE air pollution, on top of that of the million or so new citizens London probably has during Livingstones time, going about their daily lives?

The Congestion Charge was already in place, he is getting Cross Rail done to take more traffic off the roads, the new hybrid buses would have produced less shit that buses/engines from a 1947 Routemaster design, as complained about earlier he tried to encourage more Londoners onto bikes that would produce lower emissions if previously used cars - WHAT realistically could he have done on a Labour left piss-poor budget, to improve the air quality further?

How would Livingstone's £12 million satellite have reduced air pollution by 'watching' cars.

I didn't say he controls the air wally

He's done sweet fuck all to take measures to tackle air pollution. Diesel buses, tackling the congestion etc. These are things he can do something about but hasn't.

We had the return of London smog which he conveniently blamed on volcanic ash. Er no the worst of it was from the cars driven on London streets.

Do you live in London isitme? Because if not then sorry but you haven't a clue.

It is the one thing that annoys me most. Boris never got my vote because he doesn't take his job seriously. At least Ken cared. Boris was parachuted in and treats this as a hobby.

Opps ... amend 2nd para ..."I DIDN'T accuse him of being corrupt......"

HappydaysAre here ….. I would agree with you that Boris is power hungry, and that came across in a documentary about him from those close, but not only is it in his DNA handed down over a few centuries, he is a politician; few wear it on their cuffs like Boris, or openly sulked like a school child when he wasn’t getting what he wanted like Mr Brown.

Re Livingstone etc, I did accuse him of being corrupt, I chose to look at policies that affect the country more than benign personalities that have not actually done the country harm. The clear difference between Boris and Ken is ideology, the formers ideology has it’s flaws but produces a sustainable economy, whereas Ken’s, along the lines of Casto’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela needs a honking expensive surveillance State, that provides little to aspire to, and teeters on the edge of default.

BTW Livingstone appeared on ‘Have I got News for You’ several times, didn’t everyone laugh at him and he wasn’t even trying, why was that? The Livingstone Olympics, from his initial cost estimate, how many times did he put it up and by what percentage by the time he left office?

Re the Estuary Airport on 'Boris Island', does the UK not envisage further air traffic growth from a current busting at the sides Heathrow ect, and do we endlessly have to plan and object to new runways destroying peoples homes if and wherever built? If the Estuary Airport came about and they could close all or most of Heathrow, how many homes do you think could be build on that land, rather than worrying about an oil refinery?

Why shouldn’t a politician have conviction on a project and actively promote it, especially a project other than a tax sapping red tape producing Quango, that not only addresses todays needs, but looks decades ahead; especially if those that don’t run a county like a South American dictatorship looking to ‘control’ and ‘nationalise’ everything so doomed to economically fail every time, could ATTRACT the private finance/investment to build it

So who in their right mind would want any self promoting 'Bullingdon Boy’, when those NON Bullingdon Boys that totally screwed up immigration, home builds, banking, the economy, jobs and whose big State were also responsible for a £157 billion annual deficit/overspend in 2010 to fix it with, were so ‘in touch’ with the people. Hmmm.

Iggy ….. clearly being a toff means to you they are ‘out of touch’ with the people, but meanwhile could you please explain clearly to me, why Boris who may behave like a demi-god, “controls the air” that your child breathes?

Re the housing problem, did Boris or any Bullingdon Boy bring in 2-3 million net new migrants (many to London), many of which were non EU citizens and had to be signed into the UK, having been brought in by Labour as a ‘diversity’ experiment (that they knew historically voted for socialist parties) thought of in the early 2000’s? And knowing their own secret policy, why did they not listen to the 2003/4 Barker Report on Housing that Mr Brown commissioned, which said PRE immigration a UK building only around 100,000 thousand homes a year needed to be doubled?

Did the Bullingdon Boys leave power after 13-years, where spending a few hundred $billion of fat government was no problem to a Labour government, that left LESS SOCIAL HOUSING STOCK available when they left, than when they arrived?

Did you know that a coalition led by ‘the Bullingdon Boys’ has delivered more Council etc built social housing in 4- years while freezing Council Tax bills, than the NON Bullingdon Boys over 13-years of government plenty plenty, who put up Council Tax over 110% in 13-years, way over inflation, as their contribution to our ‘cost of living’ crisis?

As for vanity projects WITHOUT any use to the masses, can you not still see Blair prancing around the Millennium Dome? How much did that NET cost to build, and then stand empty and be maintained for several years?

Boris has ushered in terrible pollution endangering the health of my children. He knows what he needs to do but instead wastes money on vanity projects (bloody ditching the bendy bus, that silly cable car...). He's done very little about the housing problem. We don't need more flats thank you.

Plus he's a bullingdon boy. That's enough reason for me.

HappydaysARE here …. For the record, I have said on another thread that I do not believe that Boris would eventually make a good PM, based on the ‘noise’ that seems to surround him, but I suspect those outside the Conservatives are more worried about the prospect, as they seem to protesteth-eth eth so much.

Re his record in London and the points you have raised.

Re spending on London Buses …. Which I’d call useful ‘infrastructure’ over a Livingstone space cadet satellite, I’d say the final design decision was Boris’s, but didn’t Livingstone come to power saying he’d keep the old Routemasters I remember using everyday, but then in 2004 change his mind to ALL the old buses being replaced?

Immaterial really, the old Routemaster’s were built between 1956 and 1986, from a 1947 design, and although like other vehicles those things were so well designed/engined as to be bullet proof, like most of us old farts, they’d seen better days and long past their sell by date. And like all modern ‘stuff’ over old, the new buses no doubt have what my old dad used to say, 'more to go wrong'.

Re Boris/Barclays bikes ….. I doubt since the Model T Ford came about cycling in major cities have been ‘safe’, but to many people in or out of a major recession, whether the oil price stayed up in the $140 a barrel, or the cost of running any engine rocketed whether paying charges in London or not - the bike scheme if not a secret Boris masterplan to alleviate the homes shortage by killing Londoners off, the man clearly meant well – and as far as I know, Boris/London has not made the using of them compulsory.

The bikes are still sponsored by Barclays until some time in 2015 so I doubt if currently costing the taxpayer, but for Ken’s ‘spy in the sky’, I believe it would have required some kind of electronic whirligig in every car as a receiver to get the full ‘benefits’ from it, I wonder how much that would have cost each motorist.

As for Boris or any politician promoting themselves to the media for any GOOD idea, as Del would say, ‘kel surprize Rodney’. Most of them demand airtime to hypocritically blame other politicians for their own SCREW UPS whilst in power.

Re the River Crossing … I have no idea on that other than remembering friends privately investing in a new river shuttle company in the 1980’s and losing most of their money. Would a Labour Major or politician insist a public transport service has to make money to exist, I dunno, but then again I don’t know if taking them off the roads, or trains, gives alternative ‘savings’ to the London commuters misery. And on that note, we follow on to;

Re the Tube Strike …… please correct me if I’m wrong, but London Transport Management (or whoever) are paid to make management decisions, and tube drivers are paid to get millions of commuters each day from point A to B for those fare paying passengers to make a living, go to school, social reasons, shopping etc etc etc. So when ‘the management’ decided to close ticket offices above ground, and those that were inside were more than happy to take a generous redundancy and/or have a job elsewhere, I fail to see why Bob Crow or any other union leader NEEDS to get involved in that decision.

If it is wrong, time will tell, and if the closing of those offices was a bad decision, then ‘the management’ and those supporting them e.g. the incumbent Mayor if still in office, will THEN have to take the hit in the press and any union official giving it a well deserved ‘I/we told you so’.

So as one has to presume that ‘the management’ had thought their decision out using dumb flow charts and numerous studies, what was the POINT of meeting Mr Crow to discuss that decision, especially if ‘meeting up’ and getting around a table’ is union speak for the same thing, the unions demands will be met. Meanwhile during the worst recession is 100-years, all those fare paying commuters had their lives turned upside down, having to stay at home, walk, or pay more e.g. get a taxi.

Mr Livingstone and Mr Crow would have met, cut from the same ideological cloth they might have socialised at the same meetings, so that is why Mr Livingstone would have concentrated on Londoners avoiding pigeon shit, while Boris needed to show no quarter from similar emanating from trade unions, trying to both politically flex their mussels and make the Coalition/Boris look bad, greatly inconveniencing Londoners and blaming others. IMO

FYO so far, all you have done is given me reasons to vote for the geezer. lol